Not enough fat on grassfed beef?

[Guittarman03]

I just started yesterday on grass fed instead of grain fed beef.  Much leaner, much tougher.  In fact, I can't even chew it to 'pasty' like other meat, so I just tenderize it by chewing and then swallow in rather large chunks.  Don't' seem to have a problem digesting.

But it is so much leaner that I felt hungry for 1/2 the night and all day long, despite eating tons of the stuff.  I'd like to get more fat, but they don't have fat cuts at whole foods from grass fed beef since it's already so lean, only from grain fed.  But it is precisely the difference in the fat that I'm after with grass fed.  I don't like this lack of satiety, I won't eat raw butter (and it doesn't seem to help fill me up that much anyways).  So what do you guys do to get more fat?  Is that suet?  What is that, where can I get it?  HELP!

[glennm01]

bone marrow! awesome stuff!

[yon yonson]

i second the bone marrow. i get mine from whole foods too. it's only $2.60 a pound and it's delicious. just ask the butchers at whole foods and they'll cut you some up!

[avalon]

Tartar! Grind it up and top it with a Raw Yolk.

[Guittarman03]

Hmm tartar.  Forgive my ignorance, what is that?  I mean, I know it's stuff that grows on teeth; or tastes good on fish, but I think there might be a definition I'm missing. 

Also, I just bought an organic buffalo ribeye.  Expensive as hell, but I feel so much better.  I had no idea just how important fat is.  I can see how 'rabbit starvation' could be a pretty bad deal.  I tried to get bone marrow, apparently they don't have any until Sunday  

I guess I'll have to live off corn fed fat until then.   

[lex_rooker]

I add add suet to raise the fat level to about 65% to 70% of calories.  I like bone marrow, however, I have to pay shipping and since suet is all edible it is much more cost effective than shipping whole bones - most of which are discarded.  

I choose to eat coarsely ground meat instead of steaks and roasts.  It is much easier to determine the fat content and then add the necessary additional fat with ground meat than with whole steaks, chops, and roasts.  I have a commercial Fat Analyzer (Univex FA-73) that allows me to measure the fat content of ground meats which I do on a regular basis and here's what I've learned:

Pastured meats can be as lean as 4% fat (by weight) in the normal steaks, roasts, and chop cuts.  This works out to about 30% of calories from fat which is not nearly enough.  You need at least 15% and up to 30% (by weight) to get enough fat and feel sated.  15% fat by weight provides about 62% of calories from fat and 30% fat by weight provides about 81% of calories from fat.  I find that 20%-22% fat by weight works out about right for me and this equates to around 70% of calories from fat.  The acceptable range is very broad so you don't have to get overly technical about it.  To get to the 70% of calories from fat range you would need to add about 3.5 to 4 oz of suet or bone marrow to every pound of very lean meat, either mixed into ground meat or eaten separately on the side.

4 oz of suet added to each lb may seem high, but suet, marrow, and plain fat contain a good bit of water and my measurements have shown that 4 oz of raw fat provide about 3 1/4 oz of pure fat with the rest being water and connective tissue.    

You don't mention how much you are eating.  It took me a while to figure out that I needed to eat between 2 and 3 lbs of meat per day - more if I was doing heavy labor.  

Hope this helps,

Lex

[Sully]

Just by suet and eat it with it.

Or Buy steaks with good chunks of fat on it. (15% to 25% fat by weight)

Or buy 15% to 25% fat by weight ground meat.

[avalon]

Sorry, there are two ways to spell it. Tartar and Tartare. I switch back and forth sometimes. Here is something I made many moons ago.



Grass Fed Buffalo with Garlic, Onion, Cilantro and crushed Brazil Nuts.

[donrad]

I add extra virgin olive oil and cold-pressed high-lignan flax oil that I get from Bionatures over the internet. I also take fish oil capsules. The difference in the fat of grain finished beef and grass finished beef is the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio. Just like eating grains gives people bad fat it also gives cows bad fat.

The difference between a fat and an oil is that one is solid and the other liquid at room temperature.

Salmon has a high content of good fats. Wild caught salmon is very cost effective, even here in the Midwest. Avocados and nuts have a lot of good oil also.

I just started reading a book titled "Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol" by Mary Enig, Ph.D. I'm only on chapter one, but it is a great read. She examines the fat in human diets in antiquity before heart disease, diabetes and cancer were a problem. She states "fat intake in healthy groups can vary from 10 perrcent of the calories (desert nomads) to 50 percent or more of the calories (e.g., Greenland Eskimos)."

[donrad]

After my last reply I started reading "The Inflammation Syndrome" by Jack Challem. Coincidentally the subject was fatty acids and grass fed beef. Here are a few tidbits, and I quote:

   In human diets the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids has historically been in the range of 1:1 to 2:1. Today, ...estimated 20:1 to 30:1.

   Omega-6 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory, while omega-3 are anti-inflammatory.

   For example, grass-fed cattle have six to eight times less fat than do grain-fed cattle. In addition, beef from grass-fed cattle has two to six times more omega-3 fatty acids, ....

   Based on an analysis of 829 plants, wild plant foods contain an average of 24 percent fat, ....

   Paleolithic peoples and later hunter-gatherer societies did not consume any oils or fats unless they were part of meat or vegetables.

 

[Raw Kyle]

The answer is what Lex says. Of course the muscle of an animal does not have enough fat on it, whether it's grassfed or grainfed. The key is to eat the whole animal like any carnivore worth their salt does, which includes the fat stores. You can buy suet (soft fat) and the harder fat that people usually trim off of their steaks from places like Slankers.

[donrad]

OK, so I read through this subject and go to the local natural foods store where they just started selling grass fed grass finished beef. They have either frozen ground beef or the primal cuts fresh. The primal cuts are the tenderloin, ribeye, and New York strip. So I select a great looking ribeye about one inch thick with lots of fat marbling. It was expensive, but comparable to eating out in a restaurant.

I let the steak warm up to about 50 degrees F and tried to eat it. It was terrible! All the fat marbling that on a BBQ grill would have melted and oozed into the meat was tough stringy grizzle. It got stuck between my teeth and gagged me. I could not eat it.

I have eaten rump roasts raw, with flecks of fat in the meat and found it very enjoyable. It takes a lot of time to chew but is delicious, especially with some home brewed chili sauce. I like to watch TV or read a book and chew on the meat for an hour or two. However this fatty steak was unpalatable.

I put the steak in a roaster oven at 95 degrees for 8 hours. It came out absolutely fantastic. Juicy and delicious.

If our Paleo ancestors were in a warm climate and they caught one or more large animals would they have butchered them and carried the remains back to home camp where they may have remained for days while they fed the clan? If they had fire would they have kept the meat in the smoke to keep the flies away? I know that the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. indigenous people did this for thousands of years with Salmon.

I don't know how, but could someone start a subject on what the effects of letting meat stay at body temperature (<100 degrees) and perhaps drying would have on the nutritional value. Is smoke good or bad?

I am new to the raw meat part of the Paleo diet. I find that the meat is so much tastier for me and easier to chew if I hold it at about 100 degrees for a while, even to the point where it becomes dry. I also like the smoky flavor.

Today I was at a museum that displayed Paleo stone tools. Those who compare us to lions, tiger, wolves and bears I think are missing the point. We did not use our mouths to bring down and consume animals, we use our brains and tools. There would have been a competitive advantage to securing the meat at a home site in a calm manner..

[coconinoz]

in his the tender carnivore & the sacred game paul shepard writes that for the cro-magnon warming up the meat -- to match body temp, i take it -- was more important that either cooking it or eating it fully raw; he adds that specific meat cuts were considered more appropriate for specific people
unfortunately, shepard does not elaborate on any of this & now he's passed away

"There would have been a competitive advantage to securing the meat at a home site in a calm manner"

afaik, an improperly slaughtered or hunted animal will irrigate its body w/ adrenaline > dark purple color + bad taste of that meat

[lex_rooker]

I prefer eating my food at body temperature or a little above.  When cold the fat can have the consistency of candle wax which I'm not really fond of.   I do keep it refrigerated until I'm ready to eat it, but then take it out several hours before eating and put in a warm place until warmed through.  This softens the fat and I believe improves the flavor as well. 

Durring the warmer months just leaving it out is enough.  During the cooler months I'll place it in the sun for an hour or two.  On rainy days I may resort to putting it in a warm oven (I turn the oven on for a couple of minutes just until it starts to warm up and then turn it off).  If you have an old gas oven with a pilot light, that might be about right.

Lex

[William]

I can't get nearly enough grassfed organic beef fat because there is so little of it on the young oxen, so use whatever suet the butcher has. Some has been too horrible tasting/smelly, so I burn it in my wood furnace to warm the house. It's been -32°C  at night lately.

I use ground beef exclusively, costs less and easier to dry, and dried tastes a lot better than just fresh ground beef. Dry at 94°F

Been eating pemmican at room temperature, but think I will try warming it to 95.

Thanks Lex for the idea.

[TheWayCreatesTheWarrior]

I just started reading a book titled "Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol" by Mary Enig, Ph.D. I'm only on chapter one, but it is a great read. She examines the fat in human diets in antiquity before heart disease, diabetes and cancer were a problem. She states "fat intake in healthy groups can vary from 10 perrcent of the calories (desert nomads) to 50 percent or more of the calories (e.g., Greenland Eskimos)."

have you read "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill" ?
if so how does "Know Your Fats" compare?

[William]

So I select a great looking ribeye about one inch thick with lots of fat marbling. It was expensive, but comparable to eating out in a restaurant.

I let the steak warm up to about 50 degrees F and tried to eat it. It was terrible!



I put the steak in a roaster oven at 95 degrees for 8 hours. It came out absolutely fantastic. Juicy and delicious.



I don't know how, but could someone start a subject on what the effects of letting meat stay at body temperature (<100 degrees) and perhaps drying would have on the nutritional value. Is smoke good or bad?

If meat has marbling, it was not grassfed. The merchant lied.

Thanks for the roaster oven idea; I didn't know that they could hold such a low temperature.

Letting meat stay at <100°F to dry is how we make jerky->pemmican. It is still nutritious, see the Pemmican threads.
I find that meat dried like that tastes much better.

[donrad]

I am quite certain the ribeye came from a grass fed grass finished animal. It comes from a reputable merchant and reputable rancher. It is stated on the package.

Here's the rub. If an animal is raised on lush pasture it will have fat marbling. Especially in the fall after feasting all summer and storing fat for the winter. Here in Kansas lush bottom land pasture is available. Usually farmers/ranchers will not graze cattle on prime land - the use it for crops. They graze the cattle on scrub hillsides not suitable for tillage. The deer population has been pushed by civilization to marginal areas where humans usually don't go. This is why game is usually lean. However where I live even the deer are marbled because the have access to cropland.

Someone hit a deer on the road in front of my land. I pulled the dead animal under a tree and butchered it. It took a few hours before the meat was refrigerated. I cooked all the cuts very rare and the whole animal was tender and succulent.

Which got me to thinking. Our paleo ancestors may not have had to settle for lean meat. At that period of time the land was still pristine and not worn out by thousands of years of civilization. I believe animals in cold climates will put on a lot of fat to get them through the winter is plentiful lush food is available. Unfortunately fat does not show up on fossil records. Cold water fish have a lot more fat than warm water fish. I once read that plains Indians would rub their bodies down with buffalo fat to ward off insects.

A lot of archeological sites I have visited have small depressions in rocky areas where the inhabitants would grind gathered seeds and nuts with stones. Even the seeds and nuts probably had a higher oil and nutritional value than they do now. This is why don't hesitate to supplement my diet with ground flax seed which is high in omega 3 oil. Green leafy vegetables have omega 3 also and would have a higher concentration is grown in rich soil.